I just looked up all the import info on this species for the US and the CITES info for the world (suing their database). It doesn't appear that legal animals came out of Brazil. I swear I saw/heard that somewhere, and it's bugging me that I can't find that info!

Which discusses the role of Kazakhstan as a waypoint for the illegal trade of Dendrobatids to Asia. I did not find a mention of all A galactanotus exports being illegal; they referenced the 2005 and 2006 exports of 100 animals each:

As a Brazilian frog, it is pretty clear that the founders of our captive specimens were brought to Europe illegally, since the government of Brazil does not allow any dart frogs to be exported, and has not in recent memory. (The typical path of many frogs in the US hobby started with a trip to Europe, often illegally. In Europe export papers could be obtained, that allowed the frogs to travel to the US legally.) However by now many shipments of these frogs have arrived in the US from Europe with “legal” paperwork, and there should be no danger to hobbyists who wish to own these frogs.

This passage appears to be the source of the authors original statement. Interpret as you see fit - I just thought it was interesting that the article referenced Patrick.

No galact (or other dart frog for that matter) has ever left Brazil legally. Period, end of story.

Find proof of legal export and these number might actually mean something to your argument. These frogs were sent to Europe from the country of origin illegally where they were laundered with CITES documents.

For a species listed on a CITES appendix to be shipped overseas, they require CITES permits. The numbers you see above are the number of animals shipped from EU to the US. Brazil doesn't allow export, so there's no way these animals are coming from there. They are washed in Europe (and other areas) to appear "legal", but they are the same as castis in Brazil's eyes.

There are no exports involving Brazil after 1996 until 2012. I am not sure if "specimens" denotes live or dead. You'll need to click on the full graphic for both images. The Kazakhstan pattern mentioned above seemed to be limited to 2004, 2005, and 2006. You'll need to click on the full graphic for both images. Here's the full data set:

Full galactanotus CITES table.

Here's the summary of importer and exporter quantities by country:

CITES-galactanotus-byExporter.jpg (47.01 KiB) Viewed 2977 times

Note the 16 year gap in activity from Brazil though, and 115 of the animals (recorded as CB) were in 2012 in a single transaction. The largest exporter by far is the Netherlands and Germany. The only way the galacts could be legal would be the "specimens" in 1993 were live animals and they generated the subsequent exports from the Netherlands. The initial exports were from Germany though so that is not adding up. Either way the recent blue galacts would not line up with any legal exports to Europe.

This is an interesting data set - I'll think about a better way to plot the movement of animals over time. Either way, I think you have to get a look at the entire data set for a full picture (which is what I was trying to point out in my prior post). Seems to me the lack of export data from Brazil would support the prevailing thought that all galactanotus are of suspect origin.

(il)Legal export from the source country is cut and dry...no gray areas there.

Enforcement of the legality of said export in the importing coutry(ies) is where the gray lies.

Scientific research permits. I have a copy of a correspondence with a Dutch Hobbyist who was awarded a permit with specific verbiage that did not prohibit the destruction of any offspring. I'm going to have to dig deep for this doc though, as Galacts were/are not my 'bag', specifically.

How about the custodial agreement of the European R. vanzolinii ?

Be careful when attempting to interpret ANY laws as 'black or white'. There is an army of lawyers, world-wide who stand poised and ready to argue otherwise. It just ain't as simple as 'Brazil says no legal export, yada yada' and expect it to be carte blanche with animals in the hobby.

The only "long term" hobby galacs I know of are yellow, orange, solid orange, red and moonshine. I think "red wedge" and koi are gone. The blues showing up in the EU are recently smuggled and about as black as you can get. There are lots of impressive looking galac locales out there, but, we are not worthy. The underlying tone of my other posts should explain my frustration with our ability to manage the frogs we have. IMO, we should shut off new imports until we know how to appreciate and how to manage what we have.

The frog- spigot is ON full my friend. I would not be surprised to hear about a USF&W arrest for those Peacock Tincs in the near future just because some people are starting to get a little too bold and 'big fer' their britches'.

There is a LOT more 'Stuff', 'Entering' the US in the last 2-4 years. The Lacy act has got to be 'warming up' on some of the big offenders of getting 'boxes of books' in the mail or traveling back and forth to Germany.